Homer’s Odyssey has been one of my favourite stories for many years. It has everything: a compelling quest, a huge cast of flawed characters, and enough monsters to put Marvel to shame. So when Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation was announced I immediately scribbled the release date in my diary, ready to go an watch it as soon as it came out.
It was raining on Saturday, so I went to the cinema to watch Backrooms. For the uninitiated, this film grew from a creepypasta story about a haunted furniture store into a multifaceted piece of internet lore. Think an endless sequence of windowless rooms inhabited by unknown dangers. Think House of Leaves, liminal space, the uncanny, and David Lynch.
Now the film is, as they say, a major motion picture. It is also the most terrifying film I have ever seen.
I must admit, when Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein was first announced, my heart sank. Do we really need yet another film version of such an iconic story? Like many I’m getting a bit tired of the recycled tat we get in cinemas these days and would rather see a truly original story. Surely AI hasn’t grasped us yet to the point where we can’t come up with new ideas?
Despite being in his eighties, David Cronenberg doesn’t appear to have settled down yet to make family-friendly films. His last film, Crimes of the Future (2022) caused the entire audience to leave my local cinema until I was the only person left in the theatre. I therefore wasn’t expecting an easy ride when embarking on The Shouds, his new venture, knowing it revolves around technology which allows people to watch their loved ones’ bodies decay in their grave. A nice and cheerful film to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon, right?
Wes Anderson’s latest has dropped, and we all know what that means: endless discussions as to whether he’s become a parody of himself, is choosing style over substance, etc, etc, etc.
For people spending their valuable time arguing these points, I have one piece of advice: you don’t need to watch his films. You certainly don’t need to like them. It’s okay. You can go and watch something else.
A 3,5 hour-long film about a Holocaust-surviving architect may not sound like the best way to spend your Saturday evening. Yet The Brutalist captured my imagination in a big way and, almost a week after I saw it, still haunts my memories.
If there’s one horror trope that’s been used to the point of exhaustion, it’s the vampire. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could come up with an original vampire story after Interview with the Vampire, The Lost Boys and, god forbid, Twilight.
Robert Eggers therefore seems to have taken the sensible route of not trying to come up with an original story. As any vampire-afficionado will know, Nosferatu is a reworking of a story that first existed as a silent film, and then as a remake in the 1970s. Even though I wasn’t expecting anything new, I still went to see the film as soon as it came out.
A deep dive into the art of Alejandro Jodorowsky: join me on a journey through space, time, science fiction, and a Dune film that never came to be.
So many film adaptations of Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula have appeared over the years, surely there’s no original angle left? Renfield, which focuses on the famous vampire’s assistant rather than the big man himself, makes a brave effort to prove critics wrong.
“It’s a film about shoes,” said Mark Kermode in his review of Air. I can’t see how this could possibly be bad thing (after all, Tetris is getting it’s own TV series too). And yes, on a basic level Air is about shoes, more specifically the development of Nike’s Air Jordan range. But it’s also a very American story about how an underdog company (Nike) managed to sign one of the greatest athletes to ever walk the earth (Michael Jordan). And they all lived happily ever after.
cococatani 